2 more Uighur detainees at Gitmo heading to Palau
By JONATHAN KAMINSKY (AP) – 26 minutes ago
KOROR, Palau — Two more Chinese Muslim detainees held at Guantanamo Bay have agreed to be relocated to the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, their lawyer said Saturday, bringing to six the total who will resettle.
Palau has offered 13 ethnic Uighurs held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba a chance to move there — an arrangement that would ease President Barack Obama's plans to close the contentious facility.
The men have been held by the U.S. since their capture in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001. The Pentagon determined last year they were not "enemy combatants" but they have been in legal limbo ever since. China regards the Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs) as terrorist suspects and wants them returned.
But Uighur activists claim the detainees face persecution or death if they are returned there, and U.S. officials have struggled to find a country to take them in.
"Two more of our clients have agreed to go to Palau as the U.S. continues to look for a permanent home for them," Eric Tirschwell, the U.S.-based lawyer for four of the detainees, told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Their acceptance means six of the detained Chinese Muslims have now decided to move to the mid-Pacific state, which offered in early June to take in the Turkic Muslims from far western China.
That same month, four Uighur detainees were resettled in Bermuda.
Five of the detainees have declined even to meet with Palau officials.
The relocation agreements need U.S. Congressional approval, a process that is expected to take about two weeks.
"We are hopeful that this long overdue move to freedom will happen as quickly as possible and are doing whatever we can to make that happen," Tirschwell said in an e-mail.
There was no immediate response to requests for comment from Palauan officials or from the U.S. State Department.
Palau is a developing country of 20,000 that is dependent on U.S. development funds.
No Uighurs currently live on Palau, which has a Muslim population of about 400, mostly migrant workers from Bangladesh.
Made up of eight main islands plus more than 250 islets, Palau is best known for diving and tourism and is located some 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Guantanamo Envoy: U.S. Should Have Taken Cleared Prisoners; Some Should Never Have Been Held
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Andy Worthington
Andy Worthington
Journalist and author of "The Guantanamo Files"
Posted: September 17, 2009 09:34 AM
Guantanamo Envoy: U.S. Should Have Taken Cleared Prisoners; Some Should Never Have Been Held
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Daniel Fried came across as an eminently reasonable man placed in a disturbingly unreasonable position by his bosses. A senior diplomat, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs for four years, Fried was plucked from his job in March 2009 to become the Obama administration's Special Envoy to Guantánamo, serving as a member of the interagency Task Force charged with reviewing the cases of the remaining Guantánamo prisoners, and responsible, primarily, for finding countries to accept dozens of prisoners who have been cleared for release, either by the Task Force, often based on decisions already taken by Bush-era military review boards, or by the courts, after successful habeas corpus petitions.
These are men who cannot be returned to their home countries because of fears that they will face torture, or further arbitrary imprisonment, on their return, although Fried is also responsible for trying to broker a deal with Yemen, whose nationals make up around 40 percent of the remaining 225 prisoners. Fried spoke mainly to the BBC about negotiations with Europe, but it is apparent that attempts to overcome the long-standing failure to secure a deal with the Yemeni government remains one of the most difficult tasks that he faces.
In an interview for Radio 4's Today program, which was partly filmed and televised on BBC News, Fried gave Jon Manel a largely spin-free account of the problems he faces, some of which have been exacerbated by the U.S. government's unwillingness -- or inability -- to resettle some cleared prisoners on the U.S. mainland.
To my mind, President Obama missed a golden opportunity to bring 17 prisoners to the U.S.. in his early days in office. These men, the Uighurs (Muslims who had fled oppression in China's Xinjiang province, and who were sold to U.S. forces after being betrayed by Pakistani villagers, following their flight from Afghanistan) had been cleared of any involvement with al-Qaeda, the Taliban or any form of international terrorism by the Bush administration and by the U.S. courts, but the President wavered, allowing Guantánamo's supporters in Congress (scaremongers inspired by the hateful and false rhetoric of former Vice President Dick Cheney) to gain the upper hand, eventually persuading Congress to pass legislation blocking the transfer of any cleared prisoners to the U.S. mainland.
Fried began by explaining that his job was "miserable," because he was "cleaning up a problem" inherited from the Bush administration, which had nothing to do with advancing any positive aspects of U.S. policy. "It's not like we're advancing liberty or making peace," he said. He added that working out what to do with the remaining prisoners is "a huge problem and a complicated one," but according to Manel, although he said that he would "not criticize Congress," he stated, unambiguously, "It is fair to say, as just an objective statement, that the U.S. could resettle more detainees [worldwide], had we been willing to take in some."
The interview was also notable for the following frank exchange about the perception of the remaining prisoners as "the worst of the worst," which included, I believe, the first public admission, by a senior Obama administration official, that some of the prisoners were nothing more than low-level Taliban recruits, in an inter-Muslim civil war (with the Northern Alliance) that preceded the 9/11 attacks and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or international terrorism, and that they should not have been in Guantánamo for the last seven years:
Daniel Fried: The detainees in Guantánamo run a spectrum. Some really are awful. Some qualify as "the worst of the worst," and we're going to put those on trial. Some, frankly, should not have been in Guantánamo for the past seven years.
Jon Manel: So they were innocent?
Daniel Fried: Innocent, guilt ... I look at their files and some of them seem relatively benign, and I have in mind the Uighurs, in particular, but others ...
Jon Manel: They're the minority from China ...
Daniel Fried: That's right, the Uighur minority from China, but if I had to describe -- if there's such a thing as an average Guantánamo detainee, it's someone who was a volunteer, a low-level trainee or a very low-level fighter in a very bad cause, but not a hardened terrorist, not an organizer. Now it is those people whom we're asking Europeans to take a look at, and each government has to evaluate the background of each individual and make a decision.
Despite his criticism of the implications of the failure to accept any cleared prisoners into the United States, Fried did make the point that "parliamentarians in Europe" -- as well as the U.S. - "have raised questions about security, and we have to respect those opinions," although he was also concerned to publicize the successful resettlement of four of the Uighurs in Bermuda (in June), even though it had apparently brought him into conflict with the British government, because, as the BBC described it, "Bermuda is a British overseas territory and Britain was not informed until the last minute."
"The British government, it is fair to say, cannot be considered part of the deal. This was worked out between the Americans and the Bermudans," Fried told Manel, adding, "I will say that I've been admonished by the British government in very clear terms." He insisted, however, that the deal had been successful. "We are very grateful to the Bermudan government and the behavior of the four Uighurs has been exemplary, which really bolsters our contention that they were not any kind of threat," he said, adding, "These are four people who are enjoying freedom who would otherwise be in Guantánamo."
This was an important point to make, although I maintain that the Uighurs' "exemplary" behavior, which "bolsters" the government's "contention that they were not any kind of threat," would have had a far more powerful impact if it had happened in Washington D.C., where American citizens would have been able to appreciate, first-hand, that the Uighurs are not, and have never been terrorists.
In conclusion, Fried told Manel that he was "confident" that the President's January deadline for closing Guantánamo would be met, although he could not guarantee it. "President Obama's timetable is what we've got," he said, "we don't have Plan Bs, we're looking at that timetable. We've got a lot of work to do, we need help getting this done, and we're going to be working hard at it. But you're not going to have Guantánamo II. Whatever solution we come up with, it will be one based firmly on the rule of law and transparency."
Fried's interview coincided with an announcement that Hungary is preparing to take a cleared prisoner from Guantánamo, to add to those already accepted by the UK (Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, in February), France (Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian, in May), and Portugal (Mohammed al-Tumani and Moammar Dokhan, both Syrians, last month). Other countries who have agreed to take cleared prisoners are Belgium, Ireland, Italy (although with some disturbing conditions), and Spain, and discussions are apparently ongoing with both Lithuania and Switzerland.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press), and maintains a blog here.
Follow Andy Worthington on Twitter: www.twitter.com//GuantanamoAndy
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-worthington/guantanamo-envoy-us-shoul_b_289747.html
Andy Worthington
Andy Worthington
Journalist and author of "The Guantanamo Files"
Posted: September 17, 2009 09:34 AM
Guantanamo Envoy: U.S. Should Have Taken Cleared Prisoners; Some Should Never Have Been Held
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Daniel Fried came across as an eminently reasonable man placed in a disturbingly unreasonable position by his bosses. A senior diplomat, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs for four years, Fried was plucked from his job in March 2009 to become the Obama administration's Special Envoy to Guantánamo, serving as a member of the interagency Task Force charged with reviewing the cases of the remaining Guantánamo prisoners, and responsible, primarily, for finding countries to accept dozens of prisoners who have been cleared for release, either by the Task Force, often based on decisions already taken by Bush-era military review boards, or by the courts, after successful habeas corpus petitions.
These are men who cannot be returned to their home countries because of fears that they will face torture, or further arbitrary imprisonment, on their return, although Fried is also responsible for trying to broker a deal with Yemen, whose nationals make up around 40 percent of the remaining 225 prisoners. Fried spoke mainly to the BBC about negotiations with Europe, but it is apparent that attempts to overcome the long-standing failure to secure a deal with the Yemeni government remains one of the most difficult tasks that he faces.
In an interview for Radio 4's Today program, which was partly filmed and televised on BBC News, Fried gave Jon Manel a largely spin-free account of the problems he faces, some of which have been exacerbated by the U.S. government's unwillingness -- or inability -- to resettle some cleared prisoners on the U.S. mainland.
To my mind, President Obama missed a golden opportunity to bring 17 prisoners to the U.S.. in his early days in office. These men, the Uighurs (Muslims who had fled oppression in China's Xinjiang province, and who were sold to U.S. forces after being betrayed by Pakistani villagers, following their flight from Afghanistan) had been cleared of any involvement with al-Qaeda, the Taliban or any form of international terrorism by the Bush administration and by the U.S. courts, but the President wavered, allowing Guantánamo's supporters in Congress (scaremongers inspired by the hateful and false rhetoric of former Vice President Dick Cheney) to gain the upper hand, eventually persuading Congress to pass legislation blocking the transfer of any cleared prisoners to the U.S. mainland.
Fried began by explaining that his job was "miserable," because he was "cleaning up a problem" inherited from the Bush administration, which had nothing to do with advancing any positive aspects of U.S. policy. "It's not like we're advancing liberty or making peace," he said. He added that working out what to do with the remaining prisoners is "a huge problem and a complicated one," but according to Manel, although he said that he would "not criticize Congress," he stated, unambiguously, "It is fair to say, as just an objective statement, that the U.S. could resettle more detainees [worldwide], had we been willing to take in some."
The interview was also notable for the following frank exchange about the perception of the remaining prisoners as "the worst of the worst," which included, I believe, the first public admission, by a senior Obama administration official, that some of the prisoners were nothing more than low-level Taliban recruits, in an inter-Muslim civil war (with the Northern Alliance) that preceded the 9/11 attacks and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or international terrorism, and that they should not have been in Guantánamo for the last seven years:
Daniel Fried: The detainees in Guantánamo run a spectrum. Some really are awful. Some qualify as "the worst of the worst," and we're going to put those on trial. Some, frankly, should not have been in Guantánamo for the past seven years.
Jon Manel: So they were innocent?
Daniel Fried: Innocent, guilt ... I look at their files and some of them seem relatively benign, and I have in mind the Uighurs, in particular, but others ...
Jon Manel: They're the minority from China ...
Daniel Fried: That's right, the Uighur minority from China, but if I had to describe -- if there's such a thing as an average Guantánamo detainee, it's someone who was a volunteer, a low-level trainee or a very low-level fighter in a very bad cause, but not a hardened terrorist, not an organizer. Now it is those people whom we're asking Europeans to take a look at, and each government has to evaluate the background of each individual and make a decision.
Despite his criticism of the implications of the failure to accept any cleared prisoners into the United States, Fried did make the point that "parliamentarians in Europe" -- as well as the U.S. - "have raised questions about security, and we have to respect those opinions," although he was also concerned to publicize the successful resettlement of four of the Uighurs in Bermuda (in June), even though it had apparently brought him into conflict with the British government, because, as the BBC described it, "Bermuda is a British overseas territory and Britain was not informed until the last minute."
"The British government, it is fair to say, cannot be considered part of the deal. This was worked out between the Americans and the Bermudans," Fried told Manel, adding, "I will say that I've been admonished by the British government in very clear terms." He insisted, however, that the deal had been successful. "We are very grateful to the Bermudan government and the behavior of the four Uighurs has been exemplary, which really bolsters our contention that they were not any kind of threat," he said, adding, "These are four people who are enjoying freedom who would otherwise be in Guantánamo."
This was an important point to make, although I maintain that the Uighurs' "exemplary" behavior, which "bolsters" the government's "contention that they were not any kind of threat," would have had a far more powerful impact if it had happened in Washington D.C., where American citizens would have been able to appreciate, first-hand, that the Uighurs are not, and have never been terrorists.
In conclusion, Fried told Manel that he was "confident" that the President's January deadline for closing Guantánamo would be met, although he could not guarantee it. "President Obama's timetable is what we've got," he said, "we don't have Plan Bs, we're looking at that timetable. We've got a lot of work to do, we need help getting this done, and we're going to be working hard at it. But you're not going to have Guantánamo II. Whatever solution we come up with, it will be one based firmly on the rule of law and transparency."
Fried's interview coincided with an announcement that Hungary is preparing to take a cleared prisoner from Guantánamo, to add to those already accepted by the UK (Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, in February), France (Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian, in May), and Portugal (Mohammed al-Tumani and Moammar Dokhan, both Syrians, last month). Other countries who have agreed to take cleared prisoners are Belgium, Ireland, Italy (although with some disturbing conditions), and Spain, and discussions are apparently ongoing with both Lithuania and Switzerland.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press), and maintains a blog here.
Follow Andy Worthington on Twitter: www.twitter.com//GuantanamoAndy
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-worthington/guantanamo-envoy-us-shoul_b_289747.html
Sunday, August 23, 2009
How amateur-hour diplomacy took away dad
LOST CANADIANS
TheStar.com
How amateur-hour diplomacy took away dad
How amateur-hour diplomacy took away dad
PAWEL DWULIT/TORONTO STAR
Kamila Telendibaeva lifts her son Mohammad, 9, out of a wheelchair and into their minivan outside a community centre in Burlington. Telendibaeva has been left to take care of four sons alone as husband Huseyin Celil sits in solitary confinement in a jail in China, where he was extradited during a family trip to Uzbekistan.
Celil's case was not ignored. But it was handled very, very badly
Aug 23, 2009 04:30 AM
Iain Marlow
Staff Reporter
"Where is your dad?" Kamila Telendibaeva asks as she sits in the kitchen staring at her son Abdul's portrait of their family. The answers drift from behind her, where her four children have besieged the living room. "My dad is on holiday," says 3-year-old Zubeyir, whose face is smeared with chocolate popsicle. "Toronto?" asks Badrudin, 4, as he looks up from ploughing his head into his mom's thigh. Abdul, 5, replies quietly: "He's in China."
Abdul drew the picture around Valentine's Day last year, and the cut-out cardboard heart has remained on Telendibaeva's fridge, in her home in a Burlington housing co-op. The picture is optimistic in one respect: Abdul's eldest brother, Mohammad, a 9-year-old who is severely disabled and in a wheelchair, is pictured standing up.
But the artwork is disconcerting for a daycare project. "I bawled my eyes out," says Patti MacPherson, an early childhood educator who posted it on the wall with the others. "The way he identified it, but was okay with it. It was just, `This is my family.' "
The hunched stick-dad is covered by thick black lines descending vertically over a figure shorter than his own children; although smiling, he is a prisoner, present in Abdul's imagination but removed from the physical reality of this house, its joys and its burdens.
"Why is he there?" Kamila, 31, continues. Abdul, who is alone among his brothers in beginning to to understand the implications of his father's absence, replies: "He's in jail."
Abdul's father – Telendibaeva's husband – is Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen and Imam who once lived with them and delivered pizzas around Hamilton. He is now imprisoned in China's desolate northwest, serving a life sentence in solitary confinement. His relatives, who have met with him in prison, say he eats oatmeal gruel, is denied books and is forced to memorize tomes of Chinese laws.
While he, his wife and his sons were visiting family in Uzbekistan in the summer of 2006, he was detained and extradited to China, where he was convicted of terrorism-related offences and "splitism" – charges often applied to vocal members of China's Uighur Muslim minority, some of whom advocate independence for their autonomous region. Celil, 40, a human rights advocate, had previously fled China on similar charges.
His case was not ignored, like Suaad Hagi Mohamud's, just handled badly. Bellicose political posturing, from as high up as Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and what experts call a "lack of China competence" at the Canadian embassy in Beijing, have failed to win Celil's release and may even have ensured his incarceration. Celil's plight is emblematic, especially for Muslim or Arab Canadians, such as Abousfian Abdelrazik, who was tortured in Sudan; Bashir Makhtal, who was just convicted of terrorism in an Ethiopian kangaroo court; or even Omar Khadr, the child soldier stuck in Guantanamo. But it is still only one half of the agony; the rest of the burden falls on those left behind, like Kamila Telendibaeva, a diminutive woman now struggling to raise a large family in the shadows of personal tragedy and sluggish international bureaucracy.
The air above the pavement bends in the heat as Kamila drives her rusting Plymouth Voyageur through Burlington's gridlock. The hot wind is little comfort. Kamila's day is already long and her face is as it usually is, unsmiling but friendly, a mask broken only occasionally by the antics of her children.
She is on her way from a daycare to a special day camp. Abdul is asleep in the back and Badrudin seems listless, though it is Abdul who is sick. She is worried. A cold in a heat wave? It's those freezies, she thinks, as she parks at a community centre.
Wearing a light brown headscarf secured with turquoise pins, Kamila walks through the front doors trailing two sons. Mohammad, who is developmentally delayed, is waiting. She wheels him through the front doors but gets the thick wheels stuck on the door frame. She pushes twice more, but can't move him. Someone holds the door and she wheels Mohammad up to the minivan's sliding side door.
He begins to flail. She hoists him in and breathes deep before she leans over with the seat belt, receiving blows from boy in silence.
"Sometimes, when I lift him, I have back pain. I'm really scared, you know, if I have some problems," she continues. "They need a dad..... It was so much easier, because he's a man. He's strong. He can lift him." She starts the car and steers it back into traffic, now to a north Hamilton clinic. She is told Abdul is fine.
At home, she gets Mohammad's stroller stuck first on three tricycles and then a recycling box. In the winter it's worse: she has to shovel the ramp and driveway before Mohammad's pick-up at 8:15 a.m. But now it is sweltering. She opens the door and her children rush in, kicking soccer balls around the living room. Badrudin is somersaulting on the couch. Mohammad is crawling across the floor. Tiny Zubeyir demands inflatable pool time. Abdul kicks a ball off his mom's back as she drags in yellow grocery bags. "This is my day," she says.
Their ordeal began in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where Telendibaeva's parents fled to from China's neighbouring Xinjiang province after Mao Zedong's Communist victory in 1949. Her parents were Uighurs, nervous as revolution washed into their homeland, parts of which just enjoyed a brief bout of Soviet-backed independence.
The family had flown back in the summer of 2006 to visit Telendibaeva's family. It was her father who, in 1998, first raised the idea of an arranged marriage for Kamila with Celil, working in Kyrgyzstan as a cloth merchant and an Imam.
They had decided to get circumcisions for their young children in Tashkent, because the procedure is costly for non-infants in Canada. After the operation the children fell ill; not wanting to fly, the concerned parents applied for visa extensions.
They left their passports with Uzbekistan's security services, which Telendibaeva still calls the KGB. Celil and Telendibaeva's brother and father went to pick them up. "My husband," she says softly, "he went....." She trails off.
No one returned. Kamila, who was three-months pregnant, was frantic, but calls to their cellphones – which had by then been switched off – were not returned. At dusk, only two men came back. Celil had been arrested. "I searched everywhere," she says. "Even just to see him, to meet him."
Eventually, the family found his location and began bribing Uzbek prison guards to pass fresh clothes and food to Celil. "On June 22, they said they could not give him the food," she whispers.
He was gone.
Huseyin Celil, a husband and a father and a citizen of Canada, had been extradited to face trial in China, where Uighur activism is often conflated with separatist terrorism.
Before Uzbek authorities shipped Celil to China, the Canadian embassy in Moscow dispatched special representatives there. Uzbekistan did not listen; indeed, they had no reason to: in 2001, autocratic Uzbekistan joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a multilateral body composed of Russia, China and four post-Soviet `Stans, whose stated goal is to obliterate "terrorism, separatism and extremism" in member states.
Tashkent, where Celil was arrested, houses the organization's Regional Anti-Terrorist headquarters. It was unlikely Canada was ever going to negotiate the release of a suspected Uighur separatist in Uzbekistan, a close ally of China, which was where they would have to pursue the case.
But from the beginning, experts in Canada-China relations say, the case was bungled by Canada's Beijing embassy and taken up by ideological federal politicians in Canada, whose public statements may have crippled diplomats' efforts.
"We could have managed it better. It's possible that if we had, Mr. Celil would be in Burlington today," says Charles Burton, an academic who twice served as in-house counselor to Canada's embassy in Beijing.
He believes that Canada's foreign service remains intellectually ill-equipped to engage in the types of diplomacy that might have freed Celil, though Foreign Affairs says this is not true.
"The people that we have working in China don't have, first of all, the linguistic competence to be able to engage in diplomacy with the Chinese elements that are holding Mr. Celil," Burton says.
"Secondly, they don't have the cross-cultural communication skills to know how to approach the agencies that are responsible for his incarceration, to try and come up with some means to negotiate a satisfactory resolution."
Burton says this is because Canada's foreign service prefers to hire generalists, rather than people with expertise in a specific region or language, unlike foreign services in the United States or Britain. And Canadian diplomats posted to China, he adds, have rarely worked in the country before. He described Australia's current prime minister Kevin Rudd, a veteran diplomat and fluent Mandarin speaker with expertise in China, as "the kind of person our foreign service probably wouldn't be admitting."
Errol Mendes, a University of Ottawa law professor who co-edited a book on Chinese and Canadian approaches to human rights, said Harper's statements damaged any chance diplomats had of securing Celil's release. Harper's comment before the APEC forum in 2007 that he would not sell out human rights to the "almighty dollar," were too blunt, Mendes says.
"What I've learned, after going to China almost every year for the past 15 years is that the Chinese do not take kindly to people lecturing them. And the thing they need, more than anything else, is (help) trying to figure out a way of resolving disputes without losing face."
But a quiet, face-saving avenue for Beijing – something akin to former U.S. president Bill Clinton's private rescue of two U.S. journalists in North Korea, such as being sent abroad for medical treatment – may no longer be an option for Celil. Since riots in July left almost 200 dead in Urumchi, Xinjiang's capital, the Chinese government has ramped up repression within the province, and accused overseas Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer of fomenting the violence.
Any release now might look like a concession or even a victory to some Uighur exiles who crave an independent East Turkestan.
Since the riots, Telendibaeva has not been able to contact Celil's relatives, who used to visit him in prison every three months. They used to give her updates, which were not pleasant. He was not doing well. He was sick, his vision failing. She calls them every day.
No one picks up.
Hunks of Halal beef and lamb thaw in the sink. For her boys, Kamil likes to cook the traditional Uighur food she used to make for her husband – heavy, traditional fare like laghman noodles, which she rolls and stretches herself, or rice pilaf and mutton.
"They don't like our food, really," Kamila concedes. "They like hot dogs, sandwiches. But I don't give them. I try and make them fresh food every day."
Her boys' use of English is also an issue for her. The Uighurs' Turkic language is integral to their identity, and especially those who view the state school system's prioritization of Chinese in Xinjiang as forced assimilation. In China, they would have been taught Chinese and denied Islam; in North America, Kamila fears their cultural identity might simply wither."I speak to them in Uighur, but they talk to each other in English," she complains.
Her husband was a pillar of Uighur pride, a community volunteer and beacon for his young boys.
But his absence is pervasive. At one point, her federal child tax benefits were withdrawn because her application didn't have Celil's signature. It wasn't so bad when Kamila's mother was here. She came from Uzbekistan after Celil's arrest. After two years, diabetes and high blood pressure forced her home last August. It's been a year since she left and nearly three years since Abdul's tragic portrait has been the reality for Kamila and her sons.
She looks at it on the fridge.
"Look, he's behind a gate," she says, touching the picture.
"We need a key to get him out," Badrudin says triumphantly.
"Yes," his mother says, "We need a key."
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
China's oppression of Uyghurs remains largely ignored by the global community
Monday, July 20, 2009
China's oppression of Uyghurs remains largely ignored by the global community
11:31 PM ET
Mehmet Tohti [Former Vice President, World Uyghur Congress]: "Horrible video footage posted on the internet regarding the July 5th Urumqi massacre has brought some international attention and at the same time revealed the bitter reality that can be summarized as miserable Uyghurs, cruel Chinese and a generally uninterested world when it comes to the reaction to this tragedy that resulted in more than 1000 dead and the subsequent arrests of as many as 10,000, according to a RFA Uyghur service caller from Urumqi where riots have taken place.
All Uyghurs are unanimous in calling the July 5th Urumqi massacre a tragic event, as both Chinese armed forces and civilian Chinese mobsters were given a free hand in attacking and killing Uyghurs in Urumqi without proper restrictions. It was reported that on the late evening of July 5th, electricity was cut in a mainstream Uyghur neighborhood upon the order of Wang Lequan, Communist Party chief in Uyghur Autonomous Region, and that Chinese military forces the began a "Uyghur Hunt" that lasted the whole night, resulting in the killing and arrest of an unspecified number of Uyghurs. According to the eye witness statements to RFA Uyghur service of Kazak nationals who came to Urumqi for a business trip, 150-200 Uyghurs were murdered right in front of their hotel and the Chinese military cleaned up the body and blood from the streets just prior to dawn on July 6th. According to Edward Wong from the New York Times, "Hospital officials in Urumqi have generally declined to allow foreign reporters to interview injured Uyghurs, but have allowed them to interview injured Han." So far the Chinese government has failed to show any injured or dead Uyghurs out of fear that most of them were apparently killed by bullets shot by the armed forces.
Uyghurs in East Turkistan are in the state of shock and anger for lack of condemnation from the outside world - especially from the United States of America -particularly considering the greater global reaction to the much smaller scale riots that occurred in Tibet last year. The lack of concern from the Western world gave a much needed free hand to the Chinese regime to expand its brutal crackdown throughout the region with the threat of execution to be used for those who have been part of the public unrest.
The July 5th outbreak is just the tip of the iceberg with regard to long existing ethnic tensions and evem hatred between the Uyghurs, who are the rightful owners of "Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region" and the Chinese, who are a migrant boss from mainland China that arrived to colonize the region due to its abundant natural resources and strategic location.
Despite the incorporation of East Turkistan into mainland China in 1949, Uyghurs have not accepted Chinese rule and want to restore their independent statehood while China remains determined to colonize this territory with a massive Chinese settlement program under the shadow of guns. As a result of this program the ethnic Han Chinese population has jumped from 5-6% in 1950s to almost 60% to today, even though many media outlets are using the old census numbers that put the Chinese population in the region around 40%, which is exclusive of the nearly 3.5 million Bingtuan, 1.5 million unregistered migrant workers and nearly 300,000 military personal and their family members. This colonization has brought cultural marginalization, ethnic isolation, social injustice and political deprivation to Uyghurs in East Turkistan as the central government in Beijing has consistently put the interest of the Han Chinese on the top of its priority list.
As early as 1980 China started a "Go West” campaign with tremendous incentives to encourage more and more Chinese settlers to resettle in East Turkistan. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and emergence of neighboring Turkic republics alongside the border of East Turkistan as independent states, a campaign was launched targeting Uyghurs to prevent a possible break up of East Turkistan from China and thus tighten Chinese control over the region. After 1997, right after publishing an official White Paper under former President Jiang Zemin, the central government identified East Turkistan as a high risk area for Chinese national security and adopted harsh measures to prevent the East Turkistan problem from being internationalized. They established the Shanghai Corporation Organization with the persuasion of the neighboring countries of East Turkistan (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) in the name of border security, which put Uyghurs as prime target. Short after the establishment of SCO almost all Uyghur organizations in central Asia that were kept open since the Soviet era were dismantled or sanctioned, a number of influential Uyghur organizational leaders have been assassinated and Uyghur refugees were deported back to China for prosecution.
The September 11 terrorist attacks provided a perfect opportunity for China to step up pressure on Uyghurs and the Uyghur national identity. Further diluting Uyghur identity is a short cut answer for the Chinese government to complete the long-term elimination of a Uyghur voice. Chinese efforts in this regard include branding every incidence of civil unrest or discontent with the terrorism label; increased religious persecution; harsh political suppression; sharp ethnic discrimination in employment, education and social participation; banning the more than 2000 year old Uyghur language from schools and forcefully imposing Chinese education starting from the kindergarten level; implementing the same Chinese law differently for Uyghurs; forcing Uyghur families to send their children to mainland China for employment arrangements while bringing millions of Han Chinese to the Uyghur region to fill employment vacancies; and generally coercing Uyghurs to become like the Chinese by sacrificing their unique identity.
There are further recent examples of Chinese oppression of Uyghurs.
In May 2009 a 33 year-old Chinese teacher surnamed Zhao, who was recruited by government to teach Uyghur pupils in the historical Uyghur city of Yarkend, was discovered to have sexually assaulted more than 20 pre-teen Uyghur girls. For this unforgivable crime, he was protected by the school principal Liu Yu Mei, along with other local Chinese police. One parent of the assaulted pupil traveled to Urumqi to have his voice heard but officials ignored him.
Then video footage surfaced of brutal beatings and killings of Uyghur workers in a Shaoguan toy factory on June 26, 2009, which resulted in more than 56 dead. Both the regional government in Urumqi and authorities in Shaoguan have downplayed this brutal killing of Uyghurs issuing a report of 2 dead and have done nothing to punish the perpetrators.
Ilham Tohti, Economic Professor in Beijing Nationality University and owner of an online Uyghur website intended to promote ethnic dialogue between Hans and Uyghurs has been arrested after the July 5th massacre for his sharp criticism of the government's wrong policy stating that "unemployment among Uyghurs are the highest on earth."
As many independent analysts have pointed out, it was the Chinese government's discriminatory policy that instigated the July 5th uprisings and and so the government needs to review its hard line policies in the region and move towards the prospect of reconciliation.
One anonymous Uyghur posted his outcry as follows:
I am very shocked to find out that the world is much [more] disabled than I imagined. The images show the Chinese in Urumqi are carrying out ethnic cleansing with the protection of the Chinese Army and the Police. The world is not seeing it and could not see it. But they saw it when it happened in Darfur, Even George Clooney saw it. Fareed Zakaria saw it when it happened to Tibetans. Bill Clinton saw it when it happened to Kosovar people. And the world spoke out on behalf of all of them.
But now? They are all deaf and blind."
China's oppression of Uyghurs remains largely ignored by the global community
11:31 PM ET
Mehmet Tohti [Former Vice President, World Uyghur Congress]: "Horrible video footage posted on the internet regarding the July 5th Urumqi massacre has brought some international attention and at the same time revealed the bitter reality that can be summarized as miserable Uyghurs, cruel Chinese and a generally uninterested world when it comes to the reaction to this tragedy that resulted in more than 1000 dead and the subsequent arrests of as many as 10,000, according to a RFA Uyghur service caller from Urumqi where riots have taken place.
All Uyghurs are unanimous in calling the July 5th Urumqi massacre a tragic event, as both Chinese armed forces and civilian Chinese mobsters were given a free hand in attacking and killing Uyghurs in Urumqi without proper restrictions. It was reported that on the late evening of July 5th, electricity was cut in a mainstream Uyghur neighborhood upon the order of Wang Lequan, Communist Party chief in Uyghur Autonomous Region, and that Chinese military forces the began a "Uyghur Hunt" that lasted the whole night, resulting in the killing and arrest of an unspecified number of Uyghurs. According to the eye witness statements to RFA Uyghur service of Kazak nationals who came to Urumqi for a business trip, 150-200 Uyghurs were murdered right in front of their hotel and the Chinese military cleaned up the body and blood from the streets just prior to dawn on July 6th. According to Edward Wong from the New York Times, "Hospital officials in Urumqi have generally declined to allow foreign reporters to interview injured Uyghurs, but have allowed them to interview injured Han." So far the Chinese government has failed to show any injured or dead Uyghurs out of fear that most of them were apparently killed by bullets shot by the armed forces.
Uyghurs in East Turkistan are in the state of shock and anger for lack of condemnation from the outside world - especially from the United States of America -particularly considering the greater global reaction to the much smaller scale riots that occurred in Tibet last year. The lack of concern from the Western world gave a much needed free hand to the Chinese regime to expand its brutal crackdown throughout the region with the threat of execution to be used for those who have been part of the public unrest.
The July 5th outbreak is just the tip of the iceberg with regard to long existing ethnic tensions and evem hatred between the Uyghurs, who are the rightful owners of "Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region" and the Chinese, who are a migrant boss from mainland China that arrived to colonize the region due to its abundant natural resources and strategic location.
Despite the incorporation of East Turkistan into mainland China in 1949, Uyghurs have not accepted Chinese rule and want to restore their independent statehood while China remains determined to colonize this territory with a massive Chinese settlement program under the shadow of guns. As a result of this program the ethnic Han Chinese population has jumped from 5-6% in 1950s to almost 60% to today, even though many media outlets are using the old census numbers that put the Chinese population in the region around 40%, which is exclusive of the nearly 3.5 million Bingtuan, 1.5 million unregistered migrant workers and nearly 300,000 military personal and their family members. This colonization has brought cultural marginalization, ethnic isolation, social injustice and political deprivation to Uyghurs in East Turkistan as the central government in Beijing has consistently put the interest of the Han Chinese on the top of its priority list.
As early as 1980 China started a "Go West” campaign with tremendous incentives to encourage more and more Chinese settlers to resettle in East Turkistan. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and emergence of neighboring Turkic republics alongside the border of East Turkistan as independent states, a campaign was launched targeting Uyghurs to prevent a possible break up of East Turkistan from China and thus tighten Chinese control over the region. After 1997, right after publishing an official White Paper under former President Jiang Zemin, the central government identified East Turkistan as a high risk area for Chinese national security and adopted harsh measures to prevent the East Turkistan problem from being internationalized. They established the Shanghai Corporation Organization with the persuasion of the neighboring countries of East Turkistan (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) in the name of border security, which put Uyghurs as prime target. Short after the establishment of SCO almost all Uyghur organizations in central Asia that were kept open since the Soviet era were dismantled or sanctioned, a number of influential Uyghur organizational leaders have been assassinated and Uyghur refugees were deported back to China for prosecution.
The September 11 terrorist attacks provided a perfect opportunity for China to step up pressure on Uyghurs and the Uyghur national identity. Further diluting Uyghur identity is a short cut answer for the Chinese government to complete the long-term elimination of a Uyghur voice. Chinese efforts in this regard include branding every incidence of civil unrest or discontent with the terrorism label; increased religious persecution; harsh political suppression; sharp ethnic discrimination in employment, education and social participation; banning the more than 2000 year old Uyghur language from schools and forcefully imposing Chinese education starting from the kindergarten level; implementing the same Chinese law differently for Uyghurs; forcing Uyghur families to send their children to mainland China for employment arrangements while bringing millions of Han Chinese to the Uyghur region to fill employment vacancies; and generally coercing Uyghurs to become like the Chinese by sacrificing their unique identity.
There are further recent examples of Chinese oppression of Uyghurs.
In May 2009 a 33 year-old Chinese teacher surnamed Zhao, who was recruited by government to teach Uyghur pupils in the historical Uyghur city of Yarkend, was discovered to have sexually assaulted more than 20 pre-teen Uyghur girls. For this unforgivable crime, he was protected by the school principal Liu Yu Mei, along with other local Chinese police. One parent of the assaulted pupil traveled to Urumqi to have his voice heard but officials ignored him.
Then video footage surfaced of brutal beatings and killings of Uyghur workers in a Shaoguan toy factory on June 26, 2009, which resulted in more than 56 dead. Both the regional government in Urumqi and authorities in Shaoguan have downplayed this brutal killing of Uyghurs issuing a report of 2 dead and have done nothing to punish the perpetrators.
Ilham Tohti, Economic Professor in Beijing Nationality University and owner of an online Uyghur website intended to promote ethnic dialogue between Hans and Uyghurs has been arrested after the July 5th massacre for his sharp criticism of the government's wrong policy stating that "unemployment among Uyghurs are the highest on earth."
As many independent analysts have pointed out, it was the Chinese government's discriminatory policy that instigated the July 5th uprisings and and so the government needs to review its hard line policies in the region and move towards the prospect of reconciliation.
One anonymous Uyghur posted his outcry as follows:
I am very shocked to find out that the world is much [more] disabled than I imagined. The images show the Chinese in Urumqi are carrying out ethnic cleansing with the protection of the Chinese Army and the Police. The world is not seeing it and could not see it. But they saw it when it happened in Darfur, Even George Clooney saw it. Fareed Zakaria saw it when it happened to Tibetans. Bill Clinton saw it when it happened to Kosovar people. And the world spoke out on behalf of all of them.
But now? They are all deaf and blind."
Saturday, July 18, 2009
The Empire Strikes Back
The Empire Strikes Back
China tries to suppress its minority problem.
by Ross Terrill
07/27/2009, Volume 014, Issue 42
While the Chinese state often appears masterful in its dealings with the non-Chinese areas of the People's Republic of China (PRC) like Xinjiang and Tibet, it also seems alarmed at the volatility of its vast semi-empire.
Two weeks ago a false rumor about the rape of two Chinese (Han) women by Muslim Uighurs in a toy factory in the southern city of Shaoguan hit the Internet. In the resulting fights several Uighurs, who had been lured like many thousands to the non-Muslim south by work at high wages, were killed. Soon Xinjiang, the homeland of the Uighurs, which borders eight nations and is 2,000 miles from Shaoguan, was in turmoil. Hundreds were dead, and thousands of lives were derailed. President Hu Jintao rushed back from the G-8 summit in Rome to assert his authority.
In Urumqi, the capital of Xin-jiang, Han bystanders said they were attacked without provocation by Uighurs. Han groups retaliated. Both sides received scraps of information from the toy factory by cell phone and email (until Beijing cut off all such communications). Events spun out of control when People's Armed Police fired on protesters, and rioters torched cars and shops. Predictably, troublemakers jumped in, police were attacked, and age-old resentments flared.
One cannot fault the Chinese police's actions in Xinjiang. Mostly they tried to keep order between Han and Uighur in a parlous situation. Given the passions on both sides, it may have been impossible for security forces to avoid deaths. We can, however, fault the underlying approach of Beijing to Xinjiang, its largest autonomous region.
None of the western half of the PRC--Inner Mongolia in the north, Tibet in the south, and Xinjiang between them--was historically Chinese. The Chinese dynasties always had trouble dealing with Muslim areas, more even than with Tibet. The emperors were unfamiliar with Islam. An emperor could not enter a mosque since he wasn't a Muslim. Islam implies a realm hidden from the state's gaze, a worry for the emperors as it today is for Hu Jintao.
Xinjiang is larger than the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Italy put together. As recently as 1944 it was the separate state of East Turkistan. This desert land of mosques and oil is as different from east China as Japan is from Bangladesh. Thanks to Stalin, in 1949 it became part of Mao's new Chinese empire: secular Han ruling Uighurs and other Muslims.
Cecil Rhodes once remarked that to avoid civil war, you must have empire. This is China's approach in Xinjiang (and Tibet). Han wear the uniforms and give the orders, minority languages have been phased out of schools, and mosques are treated as hostile zones.
Zhao Ziyang, the number two figure in the Chinese Communist government in the 1980s--he fell from power during the Tiananmen crisis of 1989--once asked Deng Xiaoping's son: "How come when we're so nice to those intellectuals, they turn round and oppose us?" Beijing today can't understand why affirmative action and the many concessions given to Uighurs bring only further defiance. But Muslims in western China want something hard for Beijing to give: space to be themselves, to disappear into a mosque for the hour of Friday prayers, to write a nihilistic poem or an essay that says Marxism is mistaken.
While the development of the west has never matched the speed and success of that in the coastal areas, Xinjiang has advanced economically. The government says GDP in Xinjiang leaped from $28 billion in 2004 to $60 billion in 2008, and that life expectancy has doubled over the 60 years of the PRC. The trouble is that Xinjiang society is Chinese-style apartheid. The pain of Han-Uighur tension outweighs the pleasure of rising incomes. Economic success recasts but does not remove empire.
We can begin to understand Beijing's imperial cast of mind by considering that Chinese school children are told Xinjiang has been part of China for two millennia since the Han Dynasty (false: only the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911, incorporated Xinjiang into China). In one spectacle at the Beijing Olympics, "minority children" were dressed in the costumes of Xinjiang, Mongolia, Tibet, and so on, but every child was Han.
On two trips to Xinjiang in recent years, I found a tense and strident atmosphere. Radio and newspapers spoke of Mao Zedong Thought, class struggle, and the danger of enemies undermining the unity of the PRC. One day in the oasis city of Turfan I heard a radio message in Mandarin Chinese: "Every friend of ours in religious circles [i.e. restive Muslims] should recognize that only the Chinese Communist party represents the interests of the people of all ethnic groups."
Deng once said in a moment of insight: "The loudest thunder comes from dead silence. We are not afraid of the masses speaking up; what we do fear is ten thousand horses standing mute." The sullen silence of repressed Uighurs can mislead. Deng knew it, Hu knows it.
When I went to cross the western border of Xinjiang into Kazakhstan, every inch of my luggage, papers, clothes, and toilet gear was inspected by Chinese immigration officials. In triumph one declared, "You have taken our local newspapers!" He pulled out from the rubble of my luggage newspapers from Xian and Shanghai. "You should know with your experience that it is illegal to take local [non-Beijing] papers out of China." He folded the two newspapers under his arm, my passport inside them, and disappeared for an hour. The train had to wait. A rule from the Mao era, long disregarded in eastern China, was being used against me. Mother China watches especially closely in Xinjiang.
The present crisis began, not with demonstrations against the government, but with Uighur and Han trashing each other. Social group came up against social group. "They don't speak Chinese!" Han cried of Uighur "rapists" in the south. "They steal!"
The Chinese government quickly publicized the Urumqi riots, contrary to its longstanding practice, believing that pictures of the confrontation and carnage would arouse Han feeling on the government side. True enough, racial emotions surfaced. Uighur "are all terrorists," some Han shouted. "They're spoiled like pandas," said a woman irritated with the preferential treatment that Uighurs have received from Beijing.
The Han and Uighur truly dislike each other. Emotions run deeper than between Han and Tibetan or between Han and Mongol and argue against any hope that economic development will work its magic.
But there's larger trouble for Beijing. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and other Muslim countries have been displaying sympathy for their brothers in Xinjiang and being rebuked by Beijing as a result. Last week Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan said, "The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide. There's no point in interpreting this otherwise."
On top of this, there may be different views in the politburo about how to handle ethnic unrest. President Hu's career was shaped in non-Han areas, and his sensitivity to minority issues helps explain his unprecedented departure from an international summit to handle a domestic crisis. Under Hu, national security white papers from the military openly mention independence for Xinjiang and Tibet as threats to China. But his recipe for "stability"--guns plus propaganda--is not necessarily shared by every senior colleague. Some of the Communist rising stars below the politburo wonder if a non-Han empire is a liability to China's modern image and smiling international stance.
Still, without a major international dispute or a party split, Hu may well pull off the Communist melting pot strategy in Xinjiang (and Tibet). Muslims may be softened by growing prosperity and Xinjiang integrated internationally by the new rail, road, and pipeline links. Modernization may overcome apartheid.
Yet even so, at some point the new China must throw up a political system that allows minorities more latitude. The PRC is more populous than Europe and South and North America put together. In the United States, Mormon, Puerto Rican, Wall Street titan, Southern Baptist, Hawaiian hippie, Harvard professor, Amish grandma, Californian anarchist--thousands of such varied types coexist decade after decade. All are peas in a pod at election time or before a judge; each person is merely, and proudly, a citizen in the United States of America. The diversity is not lethal; in fact each election with the result accepted by all parties cements a unity deeper than the diversity. America's cacophony and fundamental stability are both missing in Xinjiang. Federalism is what China needs to gain true unity and stability. But it cannot come until the rule of law arrives first.
Ross Terrill is the author of The New Chinese Empire (Basic Books) and the biographies Mao and Madame Mao (both Stanford).
China tries to suppress its minority problem.
by Ross Terrill
07/27/2009, Volume 014, Issue 42
While the Chinese state often appears masterful in its dealings with the non-Chinese areas of the People's Republic of China (PRC) like Xinjiang and Tibet, it also seems alarmed at the volatility of its vast semi-empire.
Two weeks ago a false rumor about the rape of two Chinese (Han) women by Muslim Uighurs in a toy factory in the southern city of Shaoguan hit the Internet. In the resulting fights several Uighurs, who had been lured like many thousands to the non-Muslim south by work at high wages, were killed. Soon Xinjiang, the homeland of the Uighurs, which borders eight nations and is 2,000 miles from Shaoguan, was in turmoil. Hundreds were dead, and thousands of lives were derailed. President Hu Jintao rushed back from the G-8 summit in Rome to assert his authority.
In Urumqi, the capital of Xin-jiang, Han bystanders said they were attacked without provocation by Uighurs. Han groups retaliated. Both sides received scraps of information from the toy factory by cell phone and email (until Beijing cut off all such communications). Events spun out of control when People's Armed Police fired on protesters, and rioters torched cars and shops. Predictably, troublemakers jumped in, police were attacked, and age-old resentments flared.
One cannot fault the Chinese police's actions in Xinjiang. Mostly they tried to keep order between Han and Uighur in a parlous situation. Given the passions on both sides, it may have been impossible for security forces to avoid deaths. We can, however, fault the underlying approach of Beijing to Xinjiang, its largest autonomous region.
None of the western half of the PRC--Inner Mongolia in the north, Tibet in the south, and Xinjiang between them--was historically Chinese. The Chinese dynasties always had trouble dealing with Muslim areas, more even than with Tibet. The emperors were unfamiliar with Islam. An emperor could not enter a mosque since he wasn't a Muslim. Islam implies a realm hidden from the state's gaze, a worry for the emperors as it today is for Hu Jintao.
Xinjiang is larger than the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Italy put together. As recently as 1944 it was the separate state of East Turkistan. This desert land of mosques and oil is as different from east China as Japan is from Bangladesh. Thanks to Stalin, in 1949 it became part of Mao's new Chinese empire: secular Han ruling Uighurs and other Muslims.
Cecil Rhodes once remarked that to avoid civil war, you must have empire. This is China's approach in Xinjiang (and Tibet). Han wear the uniforms and give the orders, minority languages have been phased out of schools, and mosques are treated as hostile zones.
Zhao Ziyang, the number two figure in the Chinese Communist government in the 1980s--he fell from power during the Tiananmen crisis of 1989--once asked Deng Xiaoping's son: "How come when we're so nice to those intellectuals, they turn round and oppose us?" Beijing today can't understand why affirmative action and the many concessions given to Uighurs bring only further defiance. But Muslims in western China want something hard for Beijing to give: space to be themselves, to disappear into a mosque for the hour of Friday prayers, to write a nihilistic poem or an essay that says Marxism is mistaken.
While the development of the west has never matched the speed and success of that in the coastal areas, Xinjiang has advanced economically. The government says GDP in Xinjiang leaped from $28 billion in 2004 to $60 billion in 2008, and that life expectancy has doubled over the 60 years of the PRC. The trouble is that Xinjiang society is Chinese-style apartheid. The pain of Han-Uighur tension outweighs the pleasure of rising incomes. Economic success recasts but does not remove empire.
We can begin to understand Beijing's imperial cast of mind by considering that Chinese school children are told Xinjiang has been part of China for two millennia since the Han Dynasty (false: only the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911, incorporated Xinjiang into China). In one spectacle at the Beijing Olympics, "minority children" were dressed in the costumes of Xinjiang, Mongolia, Tibet, and so on, but every child was Han.
On two trips to Xinjiang in recent years, I found a tense and strident atmosphere. Radio and newspapers spoke of Mao Zedong Thought, class struggle, and the danger of enemies undermining the unity of the PRC. One day in the oasis city of Turfan I heard a radio message in Mandarin Chinese: "Every friend of ours in religious circles [i.e. restive Muslims] should recognize that only the Chinese Communist party represents the interests of the people of all ethnic groups."
Deng once said in a moment of insight: "The loudest thunder comes from dead silence. We are not afraid of the masses speaking up; what we do fear is ten thousand horses standing mute." The sullen silence of repressed Uighurs can mislead. Deng knew it, Hu knows it.
When I went to cross the western border of Xinjiang into Kazakhstan, every inch of my luggage, papers, clothes, and toilet gear was inspected by Chinese immigration officials. In triumph one declared, "You have taken our local newspapers!" He pulled out from the rubble of my luggage newspapers from Xian and Shanghai. "You should know with your experience that it is illegal to take local [non-Beijing] papers out of China." He folded the two newspapers under his arm, my passport inside them, and disappeared for an hour. The train had to wait. A rule from the Mao era, long disregarded in eastern China, was being used against me. Mother China watches especially closely in Xinjiang.
The present crisis began, not with demonstrations against the government, but with Uighur and Han trashing each other. Social group came up against social group. "They don't speak Chinese!" Han cried of Uighur "rapists" in the south. "They steal!"
The Chinese government quickly publicized the Urumqi riots, contrary to its longstanding practice, believing that pictures of the confrontation and carnage would arouse Han feeling on the government side. True enough, racial emotions surfaced. Uighur "are all terrorists," some Han shouted. "They're spoiled like pandas," said a woman irritated with the preferential treatment that Uighurs have received from Beijing.
The Han and Uighur truly dislike each other. Emotions run deeper than between Han and Tibetan or between Han and Mongol and argue against any hope that economic development will work its magic.
But there's larger trouble for Beijing. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and other Muslim countries have been displaying sympathy for their brothers in Xinjiang and being rebuked by Beijing as a result. Last week Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan said, "The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide. There's no point in interpreting this otherwise."
On top of this, there may be different views in the politburo about how to handle ethnic unrest. President Hu's career was shaped in non-Han areas, and his sensitivity to minority issues helps explain his unprecedented departure from an international summit to handle a domestic crisis. Under Hu, national security white papers from the military openly mention independence for Xinjiang and Tibet as threats to China. But his recipe for "stability"--guns plus propaganda--is not necessarily shared by every senior colleague. Some of the Communist rising stars below the politburo wonder if a non-Han empire is a liability to China's modern image and smiling international stance.
Still, without a major international dispute or a party split, Hu may well pull off the Communist melting pot strategy in Xinjiang (and Tibet). Muslims may be softened by growing prosperity and Xinjiang integrated internationally by the new rail, road, and pipeline links. Modernization may overcome apartheid.
Yet even so, at some point the new China must throw up a political system that allows minorities more latitude. The PRC is more populous than Europe and South and North America put together. In the United States, Mormon, Puerto Rican, Wall Street titan, Southern Baptist, Hawaiian hippie, Harvard professor, Amish grandma, Californian anarchist--thousands of such varied types coexist decade after decade. All are peas in a pod at election time or before a judge; each person is merely, and proudly, a citizen in the United States of America. The diversity is not lethal; in fact each election with the result accepted by all parties cements a unity deeper than the diversity. America's cacophony and fundamental stability are both missing in Xinjiang. Federalism is what China needs to gain true unity and stability. But it cannot come until the rule of law arrives first.
Ross Terrill is the author of The New Chinese Empire (Basic Books) and the biographies Mao and Madame Mao (both Stanford).
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